Renewable energy on tribal lands stalls outhttp://www.hcn.org/articles/federal-agency-shortcomings-stalling-solar-wind-tribal-winds
Is the Bureau of Indian Affairs delaying wind and solar projects? In 2008, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, in south-central South Dakota, was ready to start developing the 30-megawatt Owl Feather War Bonnet wind farm on tribal lands. The turbines would generate money for the tribe and some of the power would go to homes on the nearly 2-square-mile reservation, covering some of the poorest counties in the country. That’s a big deal considering that homes on reservations are ten times more likely to have no access to electricity than households in non-Indian communities. But even the Rosebud Sioux ran into a roadblock: the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The BIA took a long 18 months, starting in 2008, to approve a lease for the Rosebud Sioux’s wind farm. The delay lasted so long that two agreements with regional utilities who had agreed to purchase the wind power expired before the BIA issued its decision. Years later, the tribe is still hammering out the same details and waiting to build its wind farm. “We haven’t given up on it yet,” said Ronald Neiss, president of the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Utility Commission.

The Rosebud Sioux isn’t the only tribe struggling with the BIA and energy development. Tribal lands cover 5 percent of the U.S. land base but account for 10 percent of the nation’s renewable energy potential. Yet, while developers have built 686 utility-scale wind farms and 787 utility-scale solar arrays on non-tribal lands since 2004, only one significant wind project is generating power from tribal lands. (Another tribal wind farm and a solar project are now under construction, too.) Critics have largely assigned blame to the BIA, saying the agency adds an extra layer of bureaucracy and a measure of ineptitude to already-complex permitting processes.

Members of the Moapa Band of Paiute, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and others break ground on the country's first tribal solar energy project in Nevada, March 2014

Tracey LeBeau/ Energy Department

This June, the Government Accountability Office called out the BIA’s “poor management” in a report to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Among several blunt assessments of the agency’s failings:

"BIA does not have comprehensive data to identify ownership and resources available for development, does not have a documented process or data to track and monitor its review and response times, and some offices do not have the skills or adequate staff resources to effectively review energy-related documents."

The GAO also pointed out the BIA's lack of transparency and use of incomplete, outdated and incorrect property data and other files to complete its reviews. “These shortcomings can increase costs and project development times, resulting in missed development opportunities, lost revenue, and jeopardized viability of projects,” the report says. BIA mismanagement has also encouraged energy companies to pursue coal, oil and gas development on non-Indian lands instead of tribal lands.

Of course, building large energy projects and getting regulatory approval isn’t easy to begin with. Many tribes have limited investment funds, minimal infrastructure and additional taxes that already complicate projects. And reservations, with a mosaic of trust lands and individually- or family-owned parcels, also present complex situations for plotting large development. For instance, many reservations have “fractionated” parcels where dozens and sometimes hundreds of relatives own a share of an ancestor’s land, making management decisions nearly impossible.

“You have these multiple overlapping historical factors on Indian lands, and energy development is one of these things where having contiguous, abutting parcels of land is really important,” said Eric Henson, senior vice president with Compass Lexecon, an economic consulting firm, and a research affiliate with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.

The BIA isn’t the only agency responsible for the additional challenges on tribal lands, but Henson, the GAO, and others say the agency is hindering rather than helping the situation.

“Why does the BIA have to sign off on where you’re going to park a wind turbine anyway? It’s a historical holdover,” Henson said. The Department of Energy or other Department of Interior agencies are better equipped to consult on and approve tribal projects.

The GAO report recommends the BIA establish a documented and transparent process for reviewing and responding to projects and improves its data collection and tracking. This week, during a speech to the National Congress of American Indians in Minnesota, Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Arizona, also said Congress needs to help address tribes’ qualms and figure out how to get tribal renewable projects in motion.

In 2005, Congress authorized Tribal Energy Resource Agreements, to be administered by the BIA, to ease tribes’ efforts to enter power purchase deals and leases. But not a single tribe has used the process because the agreements don’t clearly outline where tribal and BIA responsibilities begin and end.

Henson suggests a “horizontal handoff” of responsibilities from the BIA to tribes, recognizing that tribes are, after all, sovereign nations. “What we’ve consistently found is you have to let tribes make their own decisions,” Henson said. “It’s the single best thing that works for tribal development.”

]]>No publisherTribesEnergy & IndustryRenewable EnergySolar EnergyWind Energy2015/07/03 03:05:00 GMT-6ArticleHow the West will feel groundwater shortageshttp://www.hcn.org/articles/a-picture-of-parched-global-groundwater-shortages-felt-out-west
New research shows stressed water supplies, as demand increases.Drought-stricken water users in California’s Central Valley have compensated for shortages by pumping groundwater at a furious rate. In some parts of the valley, the water table has dropped roughly 60 feet in a single year. Researchers say such practices are moving us toward hydrological bankruptcy.

A new worldwide snapshot of the planet’s largest underground aquifers suggests things are even worse than we thought. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, released two papers on the topic this week in the journal Water Resources Research. Globally, 13 of the 37 largest groundwater reserves, including the Central Valley, are “overstressed” or “extremely stressed,” meaning they’re being consumed much faster than replenished.

Irrigation canal and fields in California's Central Valley

USGS

“It’s much worse than what we thought, or what we think it is even now,” Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an Irvine professor, said. Famiglietti notoriously declared this spring that California has only “about one year of water left,” based on his analyses.

Groundwater depletion isn’t a new problem for the West, although it’s literally hidden from view. Arizona’s pumping habits once dried up the Santa Cruz River through Tucson and caused subsidence around other cities. Idaho’s Snake River Plain and Colorado’s Denver Basin have suffered decline, thanks to bustling growth and groundwater pumping. The southern half of the High Plains, or Ogallala, Aquifer, covering parts of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, is dropping so fast it may not be able to support irrigation three decades from now.

Famiglietti and his colleagues used remote-sensing data from NASA satellites to get a detailed understanding of aquifer groundwater levels and recharge rates. The findings challenge past aquifer storage estimates as too large and depletion estimates as too conservative. In other words, to the extent that we’re managing our groundwater systems at all, we are doing so without accurate information. The studies also highlight that many of the largest, overused groundwater basins are critical food-producing areas. Reduced drinking-water supplies and food production could potentially trigger political or social instability.

Map of trends in global groundwater storage

UC Irvine/ NASA

The Middle East’s Arabian Aquifer and the Indus River Basin of India and Pakistan are the world’s two most stressed systems, based on the research. The Central Valley, considered “extremely stressed,” isn’t far behind and has seen sharp declines in recent years. The Ogallala, also included in the studies, rates better than the Central Valley but still show signs of stress.

As in California, many water-stressed areas around the world are exacerbating shortages, as people rely more on groundwater to meet demands. California became the last Western state to enact groundwater-monitoring laws in 2014.

“It’s almost too much for our water managers to have to cope with the lack of available surface water and the declining groundwater,” Famiglietti said, noting that many managers focus on river flows while overlooking connections and impacts to underground aquifers.

Flow shortages and reservoir declines within the Colorado River Basin have resulted in massive regional groundwater losses during the past decade of drought. A 2014 report by Famiglietti and others found that 75 percent of the basin’s water losses since 2004 have come out of underground aquifers.

Famiglietti and other NASA researchers are now taking the satellite data and building a high-resolution computer model to provide better predictions of water availability across the West. That initiative, called Western States Water Mission, should give scientists, managers and policymakers a more complete picture of connections between snowpack, rivers, groundwater and soil moisture, and identify where shortages are occurring.

“The issue comes down to: We don’t include groundwater in our Colorado Basin system of laws and policies,” Famiglietti said. “Groundwater is basically dealt with on a state-by-state level, but we really need to enter into interstate discussions because we’re clearly relying heavily on groundwater to meet allocation demands.”

]]>No publisherWaterCaliforniaDroughtNew Research2015/06/18 14:45:00 GMT-6ArticlePrairie dog case challenges ESA http://www.hcn.org/articles/prairie-dog-case-bites-back-at-endangered-species-act
District judge rules ESA has no say over species that don't have multi-state presence or economic impact. Surrounded by red rock, an hour’s drive north of iconic Zion National Park, Cedar City, Utah, has more than doubled its population since 1990. The town transformed from a quiet ranching community to an up-and-coming hotspot for retirees and outdoors enthusiasts. But the growth hasn’t just been for people. Utah prairie dogs, which live only in this region, numbered just a few thousand animals in the early 1970s due to trapping, poisoning and disease, which earned them full protection under the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Today, there are roughly 40,000 prairie dogs, and the rodents have been upgraded to threatened status.

Colonies of burrows and tunnels have spread not just across natural habitat and public lands but also onto lawns and backyards, golf courses, cemeteries and the local airport, causing problems for private landowners. Locals say the ESA prevents them from controlling colonies by killing – or “taking” in ESA parlance – prairie dogs in problem areas.

The battle over the prairie dogs is the latest in a decades-old movement to gut the ESA and federal species recovery. The issue might even be headed to the Supreme Court. After a federal district judge ruled that the prairie dog and other listed species should be excluded from federal protection on private lands last year, the government is now appealing that decision to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. Attorneys general from nine states, including Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Arizona and Alaska, signed onto a brief supporting Cedar City and Pacific Legal. Several environmental groups penned their own brief backing the federal government. A hearing will likely occur later this year or in 2016.

In the lead-up to recent events, Cedar City locals organized as the People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners (PETPO, a play on PETA), and sued the federal government in April 2013, represented by the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation. The local group argues that the Utah prairie dog listing is unconstitutional because it goes against the Commerce Clause, which grants Congress the power to regulate interstate trade, but leaves intrastate trade to the states. Since the species only exists in one state and has no commercial or trade value, the ESA, a law founded in Commerce Clause logic, doesn't apply. In other words, if a species or the species' economic impact doesn't cross state lines, PETPO argues, the ESA shouldn't have jurisdiction to protect it.

"This is a prime example of the type of species the Constitution entrusts to the states to protect,” says Jonathan Wood, the Pacific Legal attorney who argued the case for PETPO. “It’s found only in a small region of southwestern Utah, it’s locally abundant, and it has absolutely no serious connection to the nation’s economy.”

James Marvin Phelps/CC Flickr

Federal district Judge Dee Benson agreed with PETPO's interpretation in a ruling last November. Utah wildlife managers relocated from private lands or killed about 6,000 prairie dogs after the decision.

If applied to other species located in a single state and without commercial value, Benson’s ruling would roll back ESA protections for up to 70 percent of the plants and animals covered by the law.

Jason Rylander, senior attorney with Defenders of Wildlife, says Benson’s decision is out of step with previous outcomes. Five other appeals courts have upheld the constitutionality of the ESA for species whether they’re in a single state or lack economic value. “The district court’s decision is an aberration and goes against, not only those other circuits, but also Supreme Court precedent” related to applications of the Commerce Clause, Rylander says.

For those reasons, Rylander is “pretty confident” the Tenth Circuit will reverse Benson’s ruling. But if it does affirm Benson’s view, the prairie dog could end up before the Supreme Court, with the fate of the ESA on the line.

That’s because the high court is more likely to hear a case when circuit courts have issued conflicting decisions, says Eric Biber, an environmental law professor at University of California, Berkeley.

The courtroom drama, however, is only “part of a much bigger campaign of people who really want to rein in the federal government’s powers and environmental laws,” adds Rylander. Defenders has catalogued more than 50 proposals introduced in Congress, just this session, meant to “cripple endangered species conservation” and weaken the ESA.

For instance, the Native Species Protection Act, introduced by Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, and others, would revise the ESA to reflect Benson’s ruling. Other efforts, all penned by Republicans, would automatically remove species from the ESA after five years, require governors or Congress to approve new listings, and elevate the role of local and state governments and research in listing decisions. Currently proposed bills are also trying to postpone listing decisions or withhold recovery funding for specific species, including the West-wide greater sage grouse, which could be added to the ESA later this year.

The Obama administration produced its own ESA reform rule this May, a preemptive strike to head off fiercer assaults on the law. Environmentalists were tepid toward that proposed change, too.

Meanwhile, should the case make it to the Supreme Court, all eyes will likely be on Justice Anthony Kennedy, Biber says. Appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Kennedy has broken ranks with other conservative justices and been a swing vote on several key environmental decisions.

Arkansas Valley Super Ditch President John Schweizer stands near an irrigation canal on his farm near Rocky Ford, Colorado. He believes a unified approach to selling water through leases is the only way to stop cities from buying and drying the valley’s farms.

Bryan Kelsen/The Pueblo Chieftain

John Schweizer has spent most of his life raising corn, alfalfa and other crops and about 200 cattle in Otero County, along southeastern Colorado’s Lower Arkansas River. It’s never been easy, but the last 15 years have been particularly tough on the nearly 81-year-old Schweizer and his neighbors. Their corner of the state is drier now than it was during the Dust Bowl. Meanwhile, growing Front Range cities are buying out farms and shifting their irrigation water to residential use — a process called “buy and dry.”

Cities have siphoned more than 100,000 acre-feet of ag water — enough for about 200,000 Colorado homes — from the Arkansas River Basin alone since the 1970s. In neighboring Crowley County, farming has vanished, school-class sizes are half what they were 50 years ago, and tumbleweeds from dried-up fields pile up along fences and block roads. “That’s what they’re stuck with, because there’s no more water,” Schweizer says. “It’s gone forever.”

Schweizer is president of the 35-mile-long Catlin Canal, which irrigates about 18,000 acres of farms. He’s hoping that the trial run of something called the Arkansas Valley Super Ditch will save the basin’s remaining communities and farms. The initiative is not actually a big ditch, but rather a scheme that allows six of the valley’s irrigation canals to pool their water rights and temporarily lease them to cities. Starting in March, five Catlin irrigators “leased” a total of 500 acre-feet of water, which would normally supply their fields, to nearby Fowler and the cities of Fountain and Security, 80 miles away. Under the agreement, communities can use the farm water to supply homes and recharge wells for up to three years out of every decade. During those years, the irrigators will have to fallow, or rest, some fields, yet will still be able to earn money from the water itself and farm the rest of their land.

Supporters believe the Super Ditch could eventually enable farms and cities to share up to 10,000 acre-feet of water. “We look at leasing water just like raising a crop,” says Schweizer, who is avoiding any potential conflict of interest by keeping his own farm out of the pilot. “It is a source of income, and anybody who’s doing that can have the water next year if they want to farm with it. And they are still in the valley, so the community stays viable.”

Statewide, cities have acquired at least 191,000 acre-feet of agricultural water, eliminating farming and ranching on millions of acres. Water managers estimate Colorado could lose up to 700,000 more acres by 2050. Like Schweizer, officials consider water leasing, also called lease-fallowing or rotational fallowing, a promising way to slow that loss while satisfying urban thirst, particularly since alternatives like new dams and other big water-development projects face regulatory hurdles and environmentalist opposition. Colorado’s draft water plan suggests the state could meet up to 50,000 acre-feet of its future water needs — and avoid more buy-and-dry — through such water-sharing deals.

But it wasn’t easy to get anyone to commit to even a trial run of the Super Ditch. Farmers worry that leasing is just the first step toward selling out, and cities are leery of year-by-year arrangements. With the pilot finally in motion, supporters hope it will build enough trust to attract more participants and inspire similar efforts elsewhere. Farmers and cities are watching, says Schweizer, “without a doubt.”

Other Western states already tap into lease-fallowing. California has had a major long-term program since 2004, designed to meet urban needs without drying up farms in the Palo Verde and Imperial valleys, while Arizona began its own pilot project in 2014. The combination of drought and urban growth in the early 2000s spurred on Colorado’s discussions. In 2004 and 2005, the city of Aurora, facing severe shortages, was able to lease water from farmers along the High Line Canal, another Arkansas Valley ditch. In 2007, the Legislature created a $4 million grant program to study and support leasing and other ways to avoid buy-and-dry, leading to the establishment of the Super Ditch Company in 2008.

Previous Super Ditch pilot projects, however, failed to launch. Cities, rural power providers and some farmers and ranchers formally complained in Colorado water court that the project could “injure,” or deplete, their own water rights and supplies, or take more water than allowed. Irrigators have also gotten “cold feet,” says Jay Winner, general manager of the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District, which backs the project. In several years, project farmers feared they wouldn’t have enough water to both lease and raise crops, due to drought.

Agricultural water users also worry that temporary transfers will diminish their legal water rights. Under state law, an irrigator who wants to lease water typically has to legally repurpose his water rights in water court to enable municipal or industrial use. Theoretically, a water court could then re-measure and reduce those rights — although that isn’t the -intent.

Some farmers believe that the deals threaten agriculture, rather than protect it, says MaryLou Smith, policy specialist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Institute. But Smith says that if they don’t become more common, “agricultural water will be bought up and converted to urban use. (Farmers) are going to get run over.”

Cities have also balked at leasing, saying it’s easier and cheaper to just acquire farmers’ water rights and build a “firm” supply than to invest in water that may or may not be available, depending on snowpack and farmers’ needs. Some urban water providers argue that having access to water only in relatively wet years, when farmers are more willing to share, isn’t that useful, because urban supplies are also plentiful then.

State lawmakers have eased some worries with a number of new laws, though. One 2013 bill, backed by Lower Arkansas water managers and others, clarified the rules for long-term water leases, helping to keep irrigators out of water court. Another allowed the Colorado Water Conservation Board to authorize up to 10 pilot projects, giving the state an oversight role. The measures helped finally launch the Super Ditch this spring.

But other projects are still running into opposition — including from some Super Ditch supporters. In northern Colorado, the Colorado Corn Growers Association, Aurora Water and Ducks Unlimited tried to develop a “flex market,” where farmers could have their water rights amended to allow them to be used for other purposes. Then they could auction them off in years when they weren’t planning to use them, and cities, industry or conservation groups could bid for the flows. But the Lower Arkansas Conservancy and others helped defeat a bill that would have authorized the market this spring. Winner says the setup looked like an illegal “speculation” scheme that could allow water to be auctioned off for non-agricultural uses every year — thus actually accelerating buy-and-dry and water diversions from one river system to another.

Andy Jones, a Johnstown, Colorado, water attorney who was involved with the legislation, responds that the flex market is a “narrow, intentional exception” to the state’s anti-speculation rule. But the opposition hasn’t surprised him, considering the water plundering that’s occurred in the Lower Arkansas. “I think the novelty is a concern to them,” Jones says, “but I don’t think it’s justified in the sense that we’re really all on the same page, trying to create incentives for water to stay in agriculture.”

Other approaches to water sharing for agriculture — and the environment — are having more luck. This spring, the nonprofit Colorado Water Trust and state Water Conservation Board established the state’s first permanent split-season water right, another legal water-sharing option. It allows water from a ranch, recently purchased by the Western Rivers Conservancy to prevent subdivision, to be used for irrigation during the early summer. After that, it will be returned to a once-dry stretch of the Little Cimarron River the rest of the year to benefit fish and improve water quality. “This project shows the environment can have a place, and it’s not a zero-sum game where you take water from one use and it never goes back again,” says Colorado Water Trust attorney Zach Smith.

And following the flex-market setback, a new working group in northern Colorado is discussing a sort of land-and-water bank, where farmers ready to call it quits could sell their resources. The “bank” would then broker conservation easements and land sales, allowing only a limited portion of water to be sold to cities. The rest would go back to farms. “It has gotten people excited,” MaryLou Smith says.

The long-awaited Super Ditch pilot project and other efforts are hopeful signs. But as demand grows and water supplies dwindle, preserving farms in Colorado and much of the West will require more than gradual, piecemeal progress. The clock is ticking: This spring, just as Catlin Canal irrigators finally began sending off Super Ditch flows, a developer announced plans to buy 14,600 farmland acres and connected water rights from the nearby Fort Lyon Canal for $53 million, the latest massive selloff to rock southeastern Colorado.

“Once it’s sold, it will never, ever come back,” says Schweizer. “We’ve had plenty of opportunities to throw our hands up and say, ‘To hell with it,’ but if I’d have done that, I wouldn’t have been farming for the last 50 years either. If what you think you’re doing is the right thing to do, then you work for it.”

This story is part of an ongoing series that looks at the people and ideas helping the West better understand and use its water.

]]>No publisherWaterAgricultureColoradoDroughtGlass Half FullEconomy2015/06/08 03:00:00 GMT-6ArticleThe Trans-Pacific Partnership could pipe in new business for the Western gas industryhttp://www.hcn.org/issues/47.9/the-trans-pacific-partnership-could-pipe-in-new-business-for-the-western-gas-industry
By lowering tariffs and regulatory hurdles, the deal could make it easier to sell natural gas to Japan.Rifle, Colorado, a quintessential Western energy boomtown, has fallen on hard times. High natural gas prices spurred a drilling boom in the surrounding Piceance Basin in the early aughts. Then, in 2008, prices crashed due to an oversupply of natural gas in the North American market, and Rifle slumped into a bust from which it still hasn’t recovered.

The next bonanza could be just around the corner, though, thanks to the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership — the largest international free-trade agreement that the United States has ever negotiated. By slashing tariffs and lowering regulatory hurdles, the TPP could make it easier to sell Western natural gas to Japan, potentially igniting another boom. The agreement could also affect Western ranchers, who face both pros and cons: opportunities for bigger beef markets, but also the threat of increased competition from producers in member nations.

In the works since 2008, the TPP includes 12 countries: the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Peru. Those nations’ economies comprise nearly 40 percent of the global gross domestic product, a bloc second in trade volume only to the European Union. That’s led critics to dub the TPP “NAFTA on steroids,” referring to the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, which has been blamed for the immigration rush, the crash of American manufacturing, and the rise of industrial farming and mining in Mexico.

The nations are still hammering out the details — much of what’s known has come through leaked drafts posted on WikiLeaks — but President Barack Obama has made its approval a priority.

In late April, Senate and House committees approved “fast-track” legislation for the TPP, meaning that Congress would surrender its right to amend the pact once it’s negotiated and presented for approval. Both chambers of Congress are expected to vote on the bill soon, with Republicans, shockingly, behind the president. The Democrats, however, are split, with some senators insisting that tougher child-labor and trade-practice measures and currency-manipulation rules be tied to fast-track support.

Analysts agree that energy, particularly natural gas, will be a major focus of the agreement. Japan phased out nearly all of its nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima meltdown, replacing much of it with electricity from natural gas, nearly all of which it must import. Due to market inefficiencies and Asia’s still-developing pipeline capacity, gas prices across the Pacific have been four to eight times higher than in the U.S.

The overseas market, in other words, is thirsting for cheap and abundant U.S. natural gas. But before it can get there, it must be supercooled and turned into liquefied natural gas, or LNG, in special terminals, then loaded onto refrigerated tankers for shipping. The only existing U.S. Western LNG export terminal is a relatively small facility in Kenai, Alaska. Construction of new facilities involves billions of investment dollars and the regulatory approval of both the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy.

Currently, there are only seven terminals in the country operating or fully approved, though there are 54 applications for building new LNG production facilities and export terminals. A company called Oregon LNG proposes to build a terminal in Astoria, Oregon, near the mouth of the Columbia River, which would ship up to 9.6 million tons of LNG annually — enough to supply hundreds of thousands of American-sized homes a year. And Calgary-based Veresen Inc. is also seeking approval for its planned Jordan Cove export terminal in Coos Bay, Oregon, and expects to ship 6 million tons a year.

Environmentalists, along with many locals, oppose both projects. The two terminals are awaiting a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permit, but have already received approval from the Energy- Department, which determines whether export to countries lacking free-trade pacts are in “the public interest.” If the TPP is approved, however, future projects exporting to the Asia Pacific will no longer need Energy Department permits. Under the agreement, “every LNG facility would be de facto approved (by the Energy Department),” says Jake Schmidt, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s International Program.

The two terminals would likely receive gas through the Northwest Pipeline, a 4,000-mile network of lines that crosses six Western states and reaches into Canada. That system plugs into the under-utilized Ruby Pipeline, a 680-mile delivery route stretching from western Wyoming to southern Oregon, and the Rockies Express Pipeline, a north-south system that goes from Wyoming into New Mexico. That should mean an uptick in business for gas drillers and communities along the way, especially in western Colorado’s Piceance Basin, the San Juan Basin on the Colorado-New Mexico border, and the Uinta Basin on the Colorado-Utah border. A 2014 report by Mercator Energy, a Colorado gas broker, notes: “The predictability of Piceance Basin reserves and abundant … pipeline export capacity should be very attractive to any foreign country or foreign consumer of LNG.” Wyoming, with 20,000 planned new oil and gas wells, has spent the last two years studying how to further increase LNG production and storage and its pipeline capacity and connections.

Increased trade with Japan could also benefit ranchers, says David Salmonsen, senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau. Producers now face steep tariffs on meats and dairy in Japan and Asia, but reports from -negotiation talks indicate Japan would chop its current 38.5 percent tariff on beef to just 9 percent.

But some Western ranchers are worried because the trade deal would also increase U.S. beef imports. “The United States keeps mounting a horrendous deficit in the trade of live cattle, beef, and processed meats,” says Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF, a Billings, Montana-based independent-rancher advocacy group. Plus, Bullard says, global trade deals typically weaken domestic food-safety rules.

With so many details still unknown, some ranchers as well as environmentalists who have come to loathe NAFTA see the TPP as a scary extension of “free trade.” But for Western energy producers in the Piceance and other drilling hotspots, the deal looks like it’s coming down the pipe just in time.

]]>No publisherEnergy & IndustryEconomyAgricultureNatural Gas2015/05/25 03:15:00 GMT-6ArticleShould states be responsible for protecting the atmosphere?http://www.hcn.org/articles/atmosphere-pressure-goes-on-trial
A youth-led climate action campaign in Oregon gets its days in court.Kelsey Juliana's habit of turning off lights in empty classrooms earned her the middle-school nickname of “Eco-girl,” she told Bill Moyers in September 2014. From hallway environmentalist, Juliana, now 19, ascended to courtroom crusader as a co-plaintiff with another Oregon teenager to force her state government to reduce carbon emissions and halt climate change.

In what’s known as an atmospheric trust lawsuit, the teens have argued, since 2011, that the state government is responsible for protecting the planet and its atmosphere. The case is one of dozens in states across the country pressing for courts to recognize the atmosphere as a “public-trust” resource that governments are obligated to protect for the welfare of people. But courts, including a judge in Oregon, have mostly rejected that tack.

The public-trust doctrine dates back to ancient Rome and holds that natural resources – such as water, air, and wildlife – belong to the public and need to be managed and preserved for the sake and benefit of humanity. Mary Christina Wood, a law professor at the University of Oregon, has suggested the doctrine extends to the atmosphere and climate, sparking a courtroom movement to sue states to address climate change. An Oregon-based nonprofit, Our Children’s Trust, has run with the strategy, recruiting working with Juliana and other teenagers and spearheading lawsuits against states and the federal government.

Juliana’s case seeks to force Oregon to reduce carbon emissions in line with broader goals within the environmental movementto lower global carbon levels to 350 parts per million, the level scientists say is necessary to avoid warming above 1 degree Celsius. The lawsuit claims that Oregon’s carbon reduction targets, set in 2007, are far too modest by those measures; not to mention, the state is falling far short of achieving its goals.

But despite the Oregon roots of the atmospheric trust movement, at least one state judge is taking a very different legal view. Lane County Circuit Court Judge Karsten Rasmussen wrote in a May 11 decision, “This court questions whether the atmosphere is a ‘natural resource’ at all, much less one to which the public trust doctrine applies.” The judge also denied that water, fish and wildlife, and beaches and shorelines qualify as public-trust resources, a narrow legal interpretation that received ridicule from critics and environmental law experts.

“The decision that was handed down is really an embarrassment to the judiciary,” says Michael Blumm, a professor at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, who coauthored an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs.

Despite the latest setback in Oregon, Wood says the movement is “gaining tremendous momentum.” Notably, this March, a New Mexico appeals court was the first to specifically recognize the atmosphere as a public-trust natural resource to be protected. Also, a 2013 Pennsylvania court decision, while not specific to atmospheric trust, overturned a legislative fracking measure because it violated the public trust and “inherent” environmental rights of people. That decision is a landmark for atmospheric trust cases in many states, Wood says, because many states’ constitutions have similar language on the public’s inherent rights.

The acknowledgment in New Mexico was a big win for the campaign, but the judges also ruled the state was meeting its trust responsibilities through its air-quality law. “That’s a step that judges really have to gnaw on a little more,” Wood says. She believes atmospheric trust enables courts to go further and compel other branches of government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet carbon reduction goals that often just serve as unenforceable guidelines. She cites the civil rights and gay marriage movements as cases when legislatures failed to protect “the fundamental rights of citizens,” but the courts stepped up to usher in change.

“Courts are still having a tough time figuring out their role in protecting the constitutional rights of youth to a habitable planet. They still think the legislatures will do their jobs,” Wood says, adding that environmental laws have “failed miserably” in terms of averting climate change.

Chris Winter, of the Crag Law Center, who represented Kelsey Juliana and the Oregon plaintiffs, says they will file an appeal of the decision. In a press release, Juliana said the judge’s opinion sent a “devastating message to all citizens that none of the three branches of government can be trusted to ensure our future.”

“We have to look at this case and campaign not as isolated in the courts, but as a real platform for the public to assert its rights,” Wood says.

Joshua Zaffos is a contributing editor for HCN. You can follow him on Twitter.

]]>No publisherClimate ChangeOregonU.S. Environmental Protection AgencyYouth2015/05/19 04:05:00 GMT-6ArticleCounties use a ‘coordination’ clause to fight the feds http://www.hcn.org/issues/47.8/counties-use-a-coordination-clause-to-fight-the-feds
An obscure provision in two environmental laws is the weapon of choice in a bureaucratic Sagebrush Rebellion.Suzy Foss became a Ravalli County, Montana, commissioner during the 2010 Tea Party wave. Sixty-five with a Sarah Palin vibe — stylish glasses, brown hair and bangs — Foss raises Arabian horses and border collies on a ranch abutting the Bitterroot National Forest, which takes up three-quarters of the county. Foss blames the federal government for the post-’90s local decline of timber sales and grazing permits, as well as the rise of wildfires and wolves, and says locals deserve more power over land management. “This is brought on us by people who mean well, but they’ve killed the forests of America,” Foss says. “They’ve murdered them as deliberately as if I took a machine gun out and went and shot someone in a crowded mall.”

So in 2011, Foss asked American Stewards of Liberty for help. The Texas-based nonprofit trains local governments to use “coordination,” an often-overlooked provision in two key environmental laws that govern land management: the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the National Forest Management Act. FLPMA specifically directs the Bureau of Land Management to “coordinate the land use inventory, planning, and management activities” with states, local governments and tribes as well as with their own management programs to “provide for meaningful public involvement” when developing rules and plans. The National Forest Management Act includes similar language for the Forest Service.

According to American Stewards Executive Director Margaret Byfield, coordination means that federal agencies must involve counties and states in planning and give them an “equal position at the negotiating table” for decision-making. “It is,” she says, “pretty straightforward.” The nonprofit says over 100 local governments have invoked coordination to fight land-use restrictions since 2006.

Many groups, including environmentalists, try to influence land management with scientific research and alternative management proposals, but policy experts say that the coordination movement has a distinctly anti-federal government flavor — a Sagebrush Rebellion in bureaucratic clothing, with links to state efforts to take over federal lands. Coordination proponents are “essentially arguing a county would have veto authority on federal land decisions,” says Martin Nie, director of the Bolle Center for People and Forests at the University of Montana. And federal officials, who interpret “coordination” very differently, fear it’s stoking more conflicts than it resolves by misinforming locals.

But though critics, including federal land managers, may dismiss American Stewards’ interpretation of coordination, it’s gaining traction among state and U.S. lawmakers and Western governors. “It has no legal basis, but it’s as much about trying to frame things politically,” Nie says. “These proposals are pushing way, way outside the mainstream.”

Byfield’s strategy is inspired in part by the long, acrimonious legal battles waged by her father, Wayne Hage, a southern Nevada rancher and one of the West’s early Sagebrush Rebels. Through the 1980s and ’90s, Hage sued the feds for control of his public-land grazing leases and water. After his death, the court upheld his property-rights claims and awarded his estate $4.2 million.

Back in Hage’s day, leaders in rural Western counties with large public-land bases passed resolutions claiming “county supremacy” and ownership of federal lands. Courts rejected those, but the idea lives on: When Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy urged county sheriffs to disarm BLM officials last spring, he was waving the banner of county supremacy.

Byfield, however, says coordination is different. She learned the strategy from Fred Kelly Grant, the Hages’ litigation chairman, who was president of American Stewards in 2006. Grant has promoted coordination in speeches to local governments while railing against the United Nations’ Agenda 21, a sustainable-development initiative some conservatives view as an international conspiracy against private property rights.

Counties typically pay American Stewards $1,500 for an initial daylong training, plus travel expenses. Foss says she and other citizens footed the cost in Ravalli County, but other local governments use taxpayer money for the training and additional consultation, and some rack up sizeable bills. Custer County, Idaho, had paid American Stewards more than $23,000 as of August 2014, an HCN open-records request revealed, and Garfield County, Colorado, has paid the group more than $26,000 since 2012.

The training encourages a local government to invoke “coordinating status,” often through a resolution, and then establish a citizen advisory committee to develop natural resource policies or contract for scientific research, sometimes through American Stewards. Before Foss left office in December after losing a primary, she and her fellow Ravalli County commissioners drafted a county natural-resources policy calling for more grazing, logging, irrigation and forest-road access than is outlined in local national forest plans, and wrote another policy for higher wolf-hunting quotas and longer hunting and trapping seasons. Commissioners shared these plans with the Forest Service, but their impact is unclear, since the agency maintains that counties’ role remains advisory.

Following their own 2013 training, Colorado’s Garfield County commissioners hired consultants to study greater sage grouse. They claim to have found four times as much regional grouse habitat as the BLM, and say that the bird — which is being considered for endangered species listing — doesn’t need federal protection.

American Stewards considers the oil-rich Permian Basin on the Texas-New Mexico border its greatest success. The group introduced coordination to local governments there in 2011, and say the resulting locally funded science forced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to back off an endangered species listing proposal for the dunes sagebrush lizard in 2012. “We can honestly say that had it not been for what the eight counties and one soil and water district did using our coordination strategy,” Dan Byfield, Margaret’s husband and American Stewards’ CEO, wrote on the group’s website, “the lizard would have been listed.”

Fish and Wildlife and others, however, credit voluntary conservation agreements covering hundreds of thousands of acres of lizard habitat on public and private lands in the region. Still, watchdogs and environmentalists charge that the decision was unscientific and politically motivated. The agency’s then-Texas administrator even lodged an official scientific integrity complaint, and, after he was reassigned indefinitely, filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint. He has since retired.

Federal managers acknowledge that they meet more frequently with local officials in counties that have passed coordination resolutions and drafted resource policies — but not because they’re required to heed those plans. “It’s fostered dialogue and communications, and that’s usually beneficial,” says Charles Mark, supervisor of central Idaho’s Salmon-Challis National Forest, which includes Custer and other coordination counties.

The BLM has even teamed up with American Stewards to host coordination trainings. “Five years ago, they would say there was no requirement in the law for them to (participate),” says Margaret Byfield. “That’s definitely changed.” But Cynthia Moses-Nedd, the BLM’s intergovernmental liaison, says the agency wants to clarify what coordination is and isn’t: “We’ve had to dispel some myths.”

Some federal staffers question how successful that’s been. Dave Campbell, a recently retired Bitterroot National Forest district ranger, hesitated to meet with Ravalli commissioners about coordination or the county resource policy for fear it would lend credibility to the county’s position. “They took that one word out of (federal laws) and defined it to say the county gets first shot at planning,” he says. “It was confusing to the public.” Adds Mark, “At times, I think (local officials) think they’ve got some sort of special status, which they don’t.”

And while officials generally encourage more research and data, environmentalists and others question the objectivity of county-funded research, given that American Stewards and many rural officials oppose most endangered species listings and federal land-use restrictions.

Garfield County, for example, paid a scientist who has also worked for the oil and gas industry — which has a lot to lose if sage grouse are listed — $35,000 to help develop its sage-grouse conservation plan. And meeting transcripts show that Byfield participated in county sage grouse strategy calls involving consultants and industry officials.

The BLM’s draft sage grouse management plan, released last August, included Garfield County’s grouse plan and habitat maps in its appendices. BLM spokeswoman Vanessa Lacayo says local governments had “significant influence,” but that final decisions “remain the BLM’s to make.”

Regardless of coordination’s on-the-ground effectiveness, its principles are gaining ground in other ways. The Western Governors’ Association is stumping for “expanded, meaningful opportunities for states to comment, participate, or take the lead” on endangered species decisions. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, R, signed a new law this March that requires counties to develop local resource-management plans, partly as “a basis for coordinating with the federal government.” Montana also passed a law in 2013 to ease coordination efforts and claims.

Even D.C. is hearing demands for greater local authority: Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, R, introduced a bill this March that would amend the Endangered Species Act to mandate that federal agencies include data from states, local governments and tribes in scientific analyses. The bill would also require agencies to provide states with all relevant studies before decisions are made. (The House passed a similar bill in 2014, largely along party lines.) The legislation would essentially provide legal grounding in line with American Stewards’ version of coordination and “something close to equal footing” for counties and states on endangered species decisions, says Jake Li, Defenders of Wildlife’s director of endangered species conservation.

“We’re all in favor of having local governments and the people closest to these landscapes be a serious part of the decision-making process, ” says Jessica Goad, advocacy director at the Denver-based Center for Western Priorities. “But that changes when it comes to the agenda behind ‘coordination.’ A lot of these policies shrouded in the term are undermining the role of the federal government. We’re seeing public lands as a vehicle for achieving very anti-federal government goals.”

]]>No publisherPublic LandsBureau of Land ManagementAgricultureRanchingState GovernmentPoliticsArticleHow an international trade deal will impact Western stateshttp://www.hcn.org/articles/trade-winds-blow-through-the-west
The Trans-Pacific Partnership could mean more beef imports and natural gas exports.The largest ever free-trade agreement negotiated by the U.S., the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is on a fast track to national approval, and it could mean bonanza and bust for Western states and their traditional industries.

In the works since 2008, the TPP includes 12 countries (including Canada, Mexico, Japan, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru) whose economies encompass nearly 40 percent of global GDP. The partners represent many of the U.S.’s largest export markets; 85 percent of American agricultural exports go to TPP countries. The agreement would expand that robust trade in the Asia Pacific, removing tariffs and investment barriers and facilitating regional supply chains. Notably, the deal could increase exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Protestors at a rally to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2014.

Flickr user AFGE

Support and opposition fall along somewhat familiar lines. Big corporations – from Apple and Facebook to Coca Cola, Halliburton and Monsanto – and ag-industry trade groups back the agreement and increased market access from Saigon to Santiago. Labor unions, environmental groups, and small food producers loathe the TPP, saying it will weaken domestic environmental regulations while boosting corporate power. They call the deal “NAFTA on steroids,” referring to the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, which triggered more fuel- and fertilizer-needy agribusiness in place of family and subsistence farms, and contributed to increased deforestation, mining, and oil and gas drilling.

Here are five ways the agreement would play out in the Western United States:

The rundown

Whatever is known about the TPP has mainly come through Wikileaks, which has published draft sections of the pact. The agreement will include an Environment Chapter, addressing illegal logging, overfishing, illegal wildlife trade, and indigenous people’s rights in Asia-Pacific countries. Proponents say the text includes the strongest environmental controls ever in a trade deal. Critics, however, say other pacts have set a low bar and that the measures from the draft Environment Chapter fall below U.S. standards for trade deals, and also rely mostly on voluntary protections.

Gas up and go

Since the 2011 Fukushima meltdown, Japan has shut down nearly all of its nuclear power. Instead, the nation now imports more liquefied natural gas than any other country, accounting for 33 percent of global LNG imports. Meanwhile, there’s a natural gas glut in the U.S. fueled by shale gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Exports for LNG, however, are limited, in part, by a prolonged permitting process through two federal agencies and publicopposition to export terminals. Two proposed terminals in Oregon have faced stiff resistance: One planned for Astoria received approval in 2014 after years of controversy,and regulators are reviewing another in Coos Bay.

The opening of Japan’s LNG market could pay huge dividends for the West’s energy industry. In 2013, Japan announced nearly $11 billion in credit guarantees to fund Japanese investments in U.S. shale gas. More exports would also support an increase in gas drilling and fracking and pipeline construction across Western states.

The TPP could also tilt the scales to approve more export terminals, since it would remove one leg of the permitting process. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would still have to OK projects. But if the TPP is in place, the Department of Energy's role of assessing whether a project is in the national interest would go away if a terminal is being developed for trade with Japan or other TPP countries.

“Oil and gas, as free-trade goods and services, and every LNG facility, would be de facto approved (by the Energy Department),” says Jake Schmidt, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s International Program.

No fracking? Sue you

Local bans and moratoria have limited or prohibited fracking – sending chemical-laden water underground to crack formations and reach gas and oil – in communities in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and California. Those efforts have faced legal challenges from domestic energy companies, and the TPP could bolster industry’s stance. The TPP would allow corporations to sue foreign governments over lost profits. Through a similar provision in NAFTA, a U.S. company won its case this March after Nova Scotia denied an open-pit mine and quarry in the Bay of Fundy. The company is seeking $300 million in compensation. In 2013, an American energy company also sued Canada for $250 million because Quebec’s fracking moratorium barred oil and gas drilling along the St. Lawrence River.

The TPP could allow international companies to sue over fracking bans in Western states, and if they win in court, receive huge settlements. That wouldn't reverse the anti-fracking measures, but the NRDC's Schmidt says the threat of massive payouts to corporations would have “stifling impacts” on existing and future bans.

Where’s the beef…from?

The increased trade with Japan could reap big profits for American farmers and ranchers, says David Salmonsen, senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau, noting that the U.S. already annually exports $14 billion in meat and crop commodities there. But producers also now face steep tariffs on meats and dairy. Under the TPP, Japan’s current 38.5 percent tariff on beef could drop to 9 percent, paying off for ranchers.

But some Western ranchers worry the trade deal would also increase U.S. imports and reduce tariffs on foreign beef from places like Mexico, Australia and Vietnam. That could offset or compete with U.S. exports to Japan. “The United States keeps mounting a horrendous deficit in the trade of live cattle, beef, and processed meats,” says Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF, a Billings, Montana-based rancher-advocacy group. “If we continue, we will erode the financial viability of our industry.”

Relaxed food-safety rules and inspections, which have occurred under other pacts, also worry Bullard. Most concerning would be imports of live animals – not just beef – into the U.S. That opens domestic herds to risks from foreign parasites, bacteria or other infections that could decimate animals and threaten consumers, Bullard says.

Fast track or rapid demise

Western congressional representatives are deeply involved in the progress of the TPP. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, cosponsored legislation to give President Barack Obama “fast-track” authority to negotiate the agreement. Fast-tracking means Congress agrees to only vote yes or no on the TPP once the nations finalize the pact, and not amend the agreement. Fast-track authority is one of the few things that the president and congressional Republicans agree on, while Democrats are split on the bill. Hoping to slow down the TPP and allow domestic debate over its contents, environmental and labor groups are targeting Dems, including Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colorado, to oppose the deal.

But those efforts may come up short. The Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee approved fast-track legislation this week, and both full chambers are expected to vote on the bill within the next few weeks.

Joshua Zaffos is a contributing editor for High Country News. You can follow him on Twitter.

]]>No publisherPoliticsEnergy & IndustryAgricultureFoodNatural GasEconomy2015/04/24 11:10:00 GMT-6ArticleFractivists target Denver to build support http://www.hcn.org/articles/fractivists-target-denver-to-build-support
A new campaign launches to stop fracking before it starts in and around Denver. Much of Denver’s 21st-century growth has populated the northeastern section of the city, namely the Green Valley Ranch neighborhood. Affordable homes and a popular library and golf course helped draw 21,000 new people and a diverse mix of white, black and Hispanic families to Green Valley Ranch between 2000 and 2010. Pat Hamill, chief executive of Oakwood Homes, the subdivision’s developer, has called the area “the best-kept secret in Denver.”

There’s another well-kept secret out at Green Valley Ranch: Oakwood Homes held onto many of the mineral rights beneath the houses, and leased them to Anadarko Energy, which in turn sold the rights to ConocoPhillips, both major players in the energy boom and fracking frenzy along Colorado’s Front Range and the oil-rich Niobrara shale. The strategy allows developers to cash in on energy development – despite the potential impacts to homeowners who often figure out the deal only after they move in.

Oil and gas development near homes in Frederick, Colorado, north of Denver (Joshua Zaffos).

While energy pressures have spread around Denver, the city hasn’t seen much drilling within its borders; 76 wells surround the airport and pre-date its construction. Now, a coalition of environmentalists, families, social justice organizations, and restaurants and breweries are launching an effort to avert Mile High City fracking before it happens.

The Don’t Frack Denver coalition is calling on Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and the city council to pass a fracking moratorium to prevent any drilling in outlying eastern communities, including Green Valley Ranch and the historic African-American Montbello neighborhood. And that moratorium is just one prong of the coalition's attack. They're also asking city leaders to weigh in on the Bureau of Land Management’s forthcoming management plan for South Park (the wide-open, rural mountain valley southwest of Denver, not the TV show), which could allow energy leasing on 280,000 acres of grassland.

“It’s significant because Denver gets nearly 40 percent of its drinking water supply from that area,” says Sam Schabacker, of environmental nonprofit Food and Water Watch, “and it’s not a question of if there’s going to be a spill; it’s when.”

Most of South Park’s public lands are already open to leasing, with conditions, says Kyle Sullivan, spokesman for the BLM’s Front Range District Office, but there is no current oil and gas development. The agency is about to start gathering comments for a revised regional management plan. The revision will include a master leasing plan, which is a relatively new approach to reviewing energy development in high-interest regions. In the meantime, a 2014 statewide BLM memo set aside all areas under master leasing plans as off-limits to oil and gasleases.

As far as considering impacts to 1.3 million people’s water supply, Sullivan says, “we’re certainly taking that into consideration, and we’re hoping to get additional public input into how to best manage these conflicting demands.”

Active and inactive gas wells in Northeast Denver. Map from Food and Water Watch.

But Schabacker and other fractivists have low expectations for the task force, since participating industry reps, citizens, and state and local officials must compromise and agree on the final recommendations. And the coalition and its inclusion of diverse social-justice and business groups could represent a major leap forward in building broader opposition to fracking and development near homes.

Padres y Jóvenes Unidos, a Denver-based, Latino social-justice group, focuses primarily on education and health. But organizer Monica Acosta says Padres Unidos got involved with the new campaign because fracking in east Denver would be “an attack on working-class communities of color.”

“In conversations with our membership, we’ve noticed there’s a lack of information about fracking, where it goes on, why we should care, and the disproportionate impacts on communities of color that historically have little political power,” Acosta says. “‘Fracking’ (the word) doesn’t even have a direct translation into Spanish.”

Acosta says her group will be educating and mobilizing members and other Latinos on the issue. That could marshal a significant and up-til-now overlooked voter bloc if a citywide – or statewide – fracking ban hits the ballot. Despite the defeats for the Front Range anti-fracking movement, proponents are looking to New York’s recent statewide fracking ban as precedent for a successful initiative.

“We think it’s important to proactively figure out what is taking place before fracking begins (in Denver),” Schabacker says. “As we’ve seen across the state, once drilling begins, it is nearly impossible to stop.”

Joshua Zaffos is a contributing editor for High Country News. He tweets at @jzaffos.

]]>No publisherEnergy & IndustryCommunitiesColoradoOilNatural GasPollutionPolitics2015/02/11 09:55:00 GMT-6ArticlePlan for a burn at Rocky Flats stirs lingering fearshttp://www.hcn.org/articles/nuclear-fallout-for-proposed-burn
More from the nuclear fallout department.It takes a little more than 24,000 years for plutonium-239 to lose half of its radioactive energy. People’s memories don’t last as long, but can have their own burning energy when it comes to risks from nuclear-weapons plants.

Plans for a prescribed fire this spring in a corner of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge – formerly the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant – have run into resistance from activists, former workers and new homeowners concerned about the health effects of burning potentially contaminated grasslands. But those worries are outdated and oversized, according to state and federal government managers, and ignore natural wildfire risks that could pose more severe problems.

Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site prior to cleanup, July 1995 (Photo via U.S. Department of Energy)

Located between Denver and Boulder, the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant produced plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs beginning in 1952. An FBI raid in 1989 halted operations after finding evidence of illegal radioactive waste dumping, burning and storage across the 6,200-acre site.

Since then, government managers and contractors have spent $7.5 billion cleaning up Rocky Flats: razing buildings, removing radioactive materials and soils, and restoring other areas. The open and rolling landscape now encompasses a National Wildlife Refuge; it remains off-limits to people, and the hottest spots are still monitored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

As part of efforts to manage the lands today, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced plans for a prescribed burn on 701 acres in the southwest corner of the site last fall. The planned burn will help thin out invasive weeds and overgrown vegetation – before a natural wildfire occurs and scorches the area more severely.

“If we have a wildfire, it will be devastating,” says David Lucas, Fish and Wildlife refuge manager. Erosion caused by a wildfire could move soil and materials from more contaminated areas and release airborne radiation.

Speaking to the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council, a panel of local government and other representatives, and a public audience on Jan. 26, Lucas said the construction of a major new housing and shopping development, Candelas, along the Flats’ southern boundary has “induced” the burn plans. He added that the planned burn area has been tested and contamination is no higher than “background levels” found elsewhere. Managers and technicians who will carry out the work will take no extra precautions compared with other prescribed burns. The state of Colorado approved a smoke permit for the project.

But all that has done little to alleviate scrutiny and fears of locals. Long-time activists and former plant workers say the burn plans are reckless and the action could release plutonium locked in the soil and vegetation. Alternatives, such as using goats to graze overgrown areas (and then probably killing the potentially radioactive livestock), should have gotten more consideration, they say. Opponents also argue that a test burn in 2000 released much higher levels of airborne radiation and toxic smoke than the government has acknowledged.

“Is it appropriate to have a burn on a radionuclide-contaminated site?” asks Mickey Harlow, a retired water-quality analyst for the nearby town of Westminster. That’s a national question for former nuclear sites across the West that are now being managed as wildlife areas and being surrounded by new development. “We have to err on the side of safety,” says Harlow, who along with others are meeting with attorneys to consider actions to prevent the burn.

Following the past coverups and negligence at Rocky Flats – and considering the ongoing health problems of former workers – the enduring skepticism of government actions at Rocky Flats is no surprise. Harlow and many others contend the site’s toxic legacy and the extent of contamination remains unknown or underestimated.

In response to the heightened suspicions of residents, the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council has asked Fish and Wildlife to reconsider its plans, scheduled for the spring when conditions permit. But David Abelson, himself an energy-policy consultant for local governments, emphasizes that the council’s opposition is rooted in citizens’ concerns, not any specific health risks.

Containing radiation – and people’s fears – is tricky business. Lucas, the refuge manager, understands the worries, but he says that while Fish and Wildlife also recognizes that prescribed fire wouldn’t be appropriate across all of Rocky Flats, residents should understand that radioactive contamination isn’t a ubiquitous threat – and choosing not to manage the expansive site brings its own dangerous consequences, including a possible wildfire spreading to more contaminated areas.

“We have to get past that,” Lucas says. “We know the Flats will burn.”

Joshua Zaffos is an HCN contributing editor. He tweets at @jzaffos. Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that David Abelson is a Department of Energy contractor, which is incorrect. The story has been corrected.

]]>No publisherCommunitiesNuclear EnergyColoradoEnergy & Industry2015/01/31 06:00:00 GMT-6ArticleRural counties dealing with loss of fed dollarshttp://www.hcn.org/articles/the-rural-rubicon
Faced with federal subsidy cuts, counties are chopping services and clamoring for logging moneyJosephine County, Oregon, faces an ominous budgetary challenge with the start of 2015: The southern Oregon county has already cut back around-the-clock law enforcement, and officials say they’re now “trying to figure out now how to keep the jail open.” The funding hole is from the loss of federal dollars through the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self‐Determination Act (SRS), which Congress failed to renew last year. As a result, for the first time since 2000, rural and mostly Western counties are missing out on more than $300 million in annual subsidies that pay for schools, road maintenance, government services and jobs, search and rescue, and conservation projects.

“We’ve seen reductions in sheriff’s patrols, and we’ve seen some counties reduce their public and mental health services,” says Eric Schmidt, communications manager for the Association of Oregon Counties. “It is a significant loss of vital public services to Oregonians, and we’re feeling it.”

Secure Rural Schools launched in 2000 as a stopgap program to make up for declining timber payments from national forests and Bureau of Land Management parcels after logging precipitously slowed in the 1980s. Along with Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT), the program compensates counties with large, tax-exempt public-land bases. Counties have been coping with declining SRS funds since Congress has only reauthorized SRS on a year-to-year basis since 2008, while both local government officials and policy analysts wonder from where and when relief may come from.

An effort led by Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, D, would have extended SRS with funds from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve last year. But representatives from Eastern states don’t understand why Western counties warrant the money. And western Republicans refused to get on board, too. The irony: The program’s expiration hurts loyal Republican constituents in rural communities.

Instead, politicians have tied the fate of SRS and PILT to a grander debate over Western land management and the pace of logging on forests and BLM lands. Rural counties want to see more timber harvesting to manage forests and bring in money. Even when it was paying out, Schmidt calls SRS a “Band-aid” that failed to address communities’ self-sufficiency, the management costs for public-lands–dominated counties, and looming forest-health and fire-risk concerns.

Logging on BLM lands in western Oregon (Photo: Oregon and Washington Bureau of Land Management)

Along those lines, now-retired Washington Rep. Doc Hastings, R, introduced the Federal Forest County Revenue, Schools, and Jobs Act in 2012. The bill would have set up a county revenue-sharing program, mandated the doubling of logging volumes on national forests and exempted such projects from environmental review. Not surprisingly, environmental groups opposed Hastings’ bill and instead pushed to connect rural county funding to conservation and restoration actions, not logging, in the forests.

Mark Haggerty, of Bozeman, Montana-based Headwaters Economics, says all interests need to rethink both PILT and SRS, perhaps combining the compensation funds. One measure would be to distribute money to rural counties in need, rather than by the existing formula, based on counties’ total public land acreage, which doesn’t account for the urban development that generates plenty of revenue.

Haggerty and others have also pitched the idea of a natural resources trust to remedy the situation. Under that scenario, managers would bank appropriations over the next 15 to 20 years to build an endowment for rural services and land management. A trust could support restoration projects, wilderness management and logging, when appropriate, while leveraging the resources of regional cooperative programs, such as Idaho’s Clearwater Basin Collaborative, which have received some past SRS funds. Over time, the trust would eliminate the need for annual appropriations – and end the political fights.

“If we can show that we’re working collaboratively on the ground with the county commissioners, the timber industry and the environmental community, to recognize both local needs and national interests,” Haggerty says, “then we ought to have a payment system that encourages and rewards that kind of management planning.” Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, D, has included the idea in a recent forest-management reform package.

The vision sounds promising, but waiting 15 years until the initiative is self-sustaining is a much longer stretch than a term in Congress. Many observers expect little more than another one-year SRS extension this year, leaving a lag in funding to the West’s rural counties, caught in the middle and left with uncomfortable choices.

“I think there’s a reasonable fear that because the federal government has chosen not to continue this money, and because local people, for whatever reason, are not able or willing to tax themselves to provide the services, there’s going to be a basic breakdown in the public-safety system,” says Bruce Weber, director of Oregon State University’s Rural Studies Program. “This could have long-term implications for (western Oregon), and it’s very difficult to see how it will get resolved.”

]]>No publisherPoliticsForestsOregon2015/01/23 06:00:00 GMT-6ArticleLeaps and boundaries for Wyoming tribeshttp://www.hcn.org/articles/leaps-and-boundaries-for-wyoming-tribes
State battles Wind River tribes over expanded reservation and greater stake in energy management.Riverton, Wyoming, looks like an All-American boomtown, fronted along a busy strip of hotels and fast food joints with steady traffic from industry trucks and pickups. But the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes are arguing that Riverton is part of the Wind River Indian Reservation – and the Environmental Protection Agency agrees. That determination, now before the courts, could allow tribes to have greater involvement in energy development rules and also strike a significant win for tribes after centuries of losing ground.

A 1905 Congressional act opened nearly 1 million acres of Wind River reservation lands in central Wyoming for non-Indian homesteaders, miners and new towns. Later acts restored much of that area as part of the reservation, but 171,000 acres, including Riverton, were never officially returned to the tribes. Despite the developments, the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone, who share the reservation, say the lands have always remained under tribal ownership.

The matter boiled over in 2008 after the Wind River tribes applied to the EPA for “treatment as a state” designation under the Clean Air Act, which would allow them to implement and manage air-quality programs on their shared reservation. In a region heavily reliant on the production from thousands of oil and gas wells, the additional oversight – and a change in jurisdiction – poses some uncertainty for the industry.

The EPA approved the tribes’ request in late 2013 and, as part of the proceedings, reviewed the reservation’s boundaries. After studying historical records, the EPA announced that the disputed lands are still part of the Wind River reservation.

“It’s a big deal for the Wind River tribes and for Wyoming because jurisdiction is what sovereign governments are all about,” says Debra Donahue, professor at University of Wyoming College of Law. “It’s important for the tribes just as an affirmation that the lands are still within the reservation and they are the primary sovereigns within that territory.”

Riverton, Wyoming would be considered part of Wind River Indian Reservation under an EPA determination (Credit Jimmy Emerson via Flickr Creative Commons)

If the appeals court upholds the EPA’s boundary designations, the state can still tax local citizens and businesses in the Riverton area. According to the Equality State Policy Center, non-Indian people would be minimally impacted, although some new tax advantages could benefit businesses. Enrolled tribal members in the extended area, however, would be under tribal jurisdiction in criminal or legal cases, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs and tribal courts would have more authority.

Under the Wind River tribe-as-state application, the tribes aren’t seeking all-out regulatory authority, but they would gain the right to monitor local air quality and to comment on regional projects that could impact environmental health. The state would maintain regulatory control over the oil and gas industry, and it’s doubtful the decision would affect energy development. Along with the rest of Wyoming, the Wind River tribes rely heavily on oil and gas for government revenues, but some homes on the reservation have hazardous drinking water, possibly linked to industry activity, and the EPA has even ordered some residents to ventilate homes when bathing or running taps.

Many observers expect the appeals court to overturn the EPA’s decision. Donahue says courts are typically reluctant to find in favor of tribes in such boundary disputes.

But one detail in the case could prove essential for the tribes’ argument: The century-old law behind the dispute didn’t set a single sum payment for the territory, like many other Indian Country purchases, but instead allowed for settlers to buy ceded lands one parcel at a time. “The U.S. Supreme Court has said that distinction is significant,” Donahue says, since it's been interpreted to mean Congress wasn't reducing the reservation boundary while the tribes retained an interest in the area. If the appeals court or the Supreme Court upholds that view, tribes with similar circumstances could pick up the strategy.

]]>No publisherTribesWyoming2015/01/20 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleFarewell to Theo Colbornhttp://www.hcn.org/issues/47.1/farewell-to-theo-colborn
Marking the passing of an influential environmental scientistTheo Colborn, an influential environmental scientist, died Dec. 14 at age 87, in Paonia, Colorado. After spending years as a pharmacist and sheep farmer in western Colorado, she decided to study watershed science, earning her doctorate at 58. Her Great Lakes doctoral research found manmade chemicals harming fish and wildlife; the findings helped introduce scientists and policymakers to the consequences of endocrine disruption.

Theo worked as a congressional research fellow and then a scientist for the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., and helped organize the first gathering of researchers studying endocrine-disrupting chemicals in 1991.

Her 1996 book, Our Stolen Future, coauthored with J. Pete Myers and Dianne Dumanoski, explained how chronic exposure to chemical compounds in flame retardants, pharmaceuticals and fragrances is stunting human development and increasing the incidence of cognitive and behavioral disorders, infertility, thyroid problems and cancers. In 2003, Theo founded The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX), a research clearinghouse. She received many awards for her work, including the TIME Global Environmental Heroes award, in 2007, and the Jonathan Foreman award from the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, in 2014.

“She was a visionary,” says Carol Kwiatkowski, executive director of TEDX, “(with a) commitment to uncovering the truth and sharing that information.”

CORECTIONSIn our Dec. 22 issue, the cover story, “The Dust Detectives,” left off a portion of the name of the institution employing atmospheric chemist Kimberly Prather: The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla. The article “Descent through time” mistakenly identified Georgia Tech paleontologist Jenny McGuire as Jess Miller-Campe. On the Letters page, the Stevens cartoon wasn’t quite as funny as it should have been, since the words dropped off when we placed the final art. The caption reads, “Your meal will be out shortly. The salmon was a little wilder than we anticipated.”

Alert reader John Karon of Albuquerque, New Mexico, sent us a note about our obituary for activist Martin Litton: “I am likely the 1000th person to send in the correction that Martin was NOT the oldest man to raft the Colorado through Grand Canyon, but the oldest to row his own dory through the Canyon.” Thanks, John.

The restoration project map in our Dec. 8, 2014, cover story “The Great Salmon Compromise” had a typo and a misplaced label. The Pend Oreille River comes out of Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho, but it enters the lake as the Clark Fork.

In our Nov. 24 story on trains carrying crude oil, “a sunny weekend afternoon in July” became one in September, due to an editorial mixup. HCN regrets the errors; we all got nice big lumps of coal in our stockings.

Image from protecthealth.org

]]>No publisherDear Friends2015/01/19 04:00:00 GMT-6ArticleRemembering an environmental science pioneerhttp://www.hcn.org/articles/remembering-theo-colborn
Theo Colborn uncovered effects of chemicals, like those used in fracking, on the human body.In March 2004, I found myself filing papers in the quiet home of Theo Colborn, the internationally prominent environmental scientist who, for decades, lived on and off in tiny Paonia, Colorado, also High Country News’ hometown. An island of file cabinets stood in the middle of Theo’s kitchen and, during the following months, I sorted through stacks of research articles and newspaper clips. Each one documented a report or study on endocrine disruption, linking the exposure to chemicals in the environment and consumer products to unnerving changes to the hormones, health and development of people and animals.

One afternoon, Theo opened a drawer to find a report and instead discovered a folder of poetry. "Oh! You need to have this," she said and pulled out a photocopy of a poem, attributed to Goethe, which includes the lines: "…the moment one definitely commits oneself/ then Providence moves too./ ... Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it./ Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."

Environmental scientist Theo Colborn recently died at the age of 87.

Theo, who died December 14 at age 87, lived a life rooted in commitment and boldness. After years as a small-town pharmacist and sheep farmer in western Colorado while raising her four children, she went through a divorce and decided to study watershed science and the environment. She earned her Ph.D at age 58, an unlikely third act in life.

“So many people – sometimes much younger – were in awe of what she accomplished and to realize that she began that work at the age of 58 is so inspiring,” says Carol Kwiatkowski, executive director of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, the nonprofit research clearinghouse that grew out of Theo’s kitchen repository.

Theo’s Great Lakes doctoral research found manmade chemicals accumulating in female birds, fish and wildlife and, alarmingly, being passed along to their offspring and impacting early development. The findings introduced scientists and policymakers to the uncomfortable consequences of endocrine disruption.

She went on to work as a Congressional research fellow and then a scientist for World Wildlife Fund in D.C., and helped organize the first gathering of researchers studying endocrine-disrupting chemicals in 1991.

Her 1996 book, Our Stolen Future, coauthored with J. Pete Myers and journalist Dianne Dumanoski, told the story of how low-level yet chronic exposure to chemical compounds used as flame retardants, pharmaceuticals, softeners, and fragrances are stunting people’s development and fertility and increasing the probabilities of cognitive and behavioral disorders, developmental delays, thyroid problems and obesity, and cancers. In his foreword, Al Gore called the book a sequel to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and it’s no exaggeration to say Theo’s efforts triggered new laws and research around the world. The fact that people know what bisphenol-A is – and that many companies have removed the compound from water bottles and baby products – is part of her legacy.

The first time we met, Theo shared the bad news that I likely had lower sperm counts than men a generation ago due to the chemical burden accumulating in my body, saying, “You’re half the man your father is.” She warned everyone against microwaving plastics, because that increased the leaching of chemicals into foods and people’s bodies. While government research and regulations never lived up to her concerns, she never stopped advocating for greater oversight toward endocrine disruption. In 2012, Theo shared those concerns at a TEDx gathering, in the form of an open letter to President Obama.

Even as she got older, her memory remained razor sharp, and despite serving as a constant messenger of discomfiting news, she also maintained a delightful and animated demeanor. “She was twice the age of anybody who worked here, and we all had a hard time keeping up with her,” Kwiatkowski says.

Theo’s influence is far-flung. Remembrances shared by colleagues and friends speak to the energy and warmth that drove her work and also made her a superb science communicator. Young scientists and reporters grasped and explored the looming environmental health crisis thanks to her. Often reluctant to be quoted, she would instead direct reporters to researchers in the labs and field and to people suffering health ailments on the ground. In the last decade, Theo honed her attention on the human health effects of the oil and gas boom and the use of fracking chemicals in western Colorado and beyond.

“She was a visionary – she jumped on the whole natural gas and fracking issues before anyone was thinking about them,” Kwiatkowski says. “Her drive and tireless energy, her passion and commitment to uncovering the truth and sharing that information were really some of her defining features.”

]]>No publisherPeople & PlacesCommunitiesPollutionU.S. Environmental Protection AgencyEssays2014/12/18 14:50:00 GMT-6ArticleA grouse divided http://www.hcn.org/issues/46.21/a-grouse-divided
Will new federal protections rescue the Gunnison sage grouse?In the 1970s, biologist Clait Braun noticed something different about the sage grouse in western Colorado’s Gunnison River Basin. Their wings and bodies seemed smaller than those of the greater sage grouse, which strut through sagebrush across millions of acres in 11 Western states. More research revealed more differences: The Gunnison males pop the yellow air sacs on their chests more frequently during their exuberant mating rituals and wag their butts at its finale. Their genetics are also distinct, and in 2000, the Gunnison grouse was recognized as a separate species.

Scientists were excited but worried, because by then, only about 4,000 birds remained, squeezed into just 10 percent of their historic range as sagebrush vanished under houses and cows. Braun, who led Colorado’s bird research program from 1973 to 1999, saw isolated populations disappear from Colorado and southern Utah. He prophesied a bleak future, warning High Country News in 2006 that Endangered Species Act protection offered the “best opportunity for the Gunnison sage grouse to be around 50 years from now.”

But for years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wavered, citing studies that showed a small yet steady population of about 4,600. Then, in January 2013, under legal pressure, it finally proposed listing the Gunnison sage grouse as endangered and setting aside critical habitat where ranching, oil and gas drilling, and other development could be limited. This November, the agency officially listed the grouse — but only as threatened: The bird is inching toward extinction, the agency claims, but not yet at the brink.

Braun saw the downgrade as a “slap in the face.” It will change little on the ground, he argues, where the continued loss and fragmentation of sagebrush is slowly strangling the species. “They could have done a threatened listing 20 years ago,” Braun says, and it might have helped. Now, the grouse “deserves” the stricter protections of an endangered listing.

The listing won’t force new restrictions on landowners or energy companies taking voluntary steps to help grouse. It’s a politically softer approach, but whether it can save the species is unknown.

Farmers, ranchers, energy companies, local and state governments and federal land-management agencies have spent years trying to avoid a listing. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is developing a conservation plan to reduce impacts from cattle grazing and oil and gas drilling by restricting those activities during nesting and wintering on 400,000 acres in the Gunnison Basin, where nearly all the remaining birds live. Voluntary pledges cover another 94,000 private acres, where farmers and ranchers agree to alter grazing practices and limit herd sizes, and improve or restore habitat. Colorado state managers are translocating birds from the Gunnison region to restore six satellite populations, some with just a few dozen survivors.

Listing opponents, who believe this is sufficient, denounced the decision; Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, D, threatened to sue. Still, the voluntary measures helped keep the bird from being tagged endangered, as originally proposed. That means industry, ranchers and homebuilders may not have to do more than they’re already doing.

The listing is a politically softer approach, but whether it can save the species is unknown.

Threatened status allows the Fish and Wildlife Service to propose a so-called 4(d) rule, an Endangered Species Act provision that would leave BLM and state management plans in place, and shield landowners already taking voluntary measures from new and tougher restrictions. The agency is pursuing a 4(d) rule for the Gunnison sage grouse, as it’s done with the recently listed lesser prairie chicken and the polar bear.

But environmental groups see threatened listings and 4(d) rules as a way to avoid restricting development when habitat overlaps with politically powerful industries. “It used to be 4(d) rules were very uncommon,” says Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist with WildEarth Guardians. “Now, it seems every other listing has a 4(d) rule attached.” Molvar says the rules serve as loopholes, allowing industries to continue harming species. Braun adds that the voluntary agreements and conservation plans used to justify the grouse’s threatened status have demonstrated “no measurable success” in increasing its numbers or distribution. He is joining WildEarth Guardians to sue Fish and Wildlife for an endangered listing.

The decision also reduced the proposed critical habitat from 1.7 million to 1.4 million acres. That sounds like a lot of land, but drilling leases already issued within it probably won’t be nixed, while on land covered by voluntary agreements, drilling and other activities can continue. Habitat disturbances often cause grouse deaths — from roads and vehicles, power lines and predators, says Cameron Aldridge, a research scientist with Colorado State University. Additionally, Aldridge’s research has shown that roads and urbanization cause “functional habitat loss,” meaning the birds avoid otherwise healthy and suitable sagebrush close to development. And Gunnison County is expected to keep growing, from 15,700 to 21,000 people by 2040, with most new development likely to clear sagebrush from private lands.

“We know that as sagebrush is lost, we lose sage grouse,” Aldridge says. “If we want to maintain populations, we can’t lose any more sagebrush.”

Braun believes the satellite populations will eventually “zero out,” leaving just one viable population in the Gunnison Basin, and the entire species thus vulnerable to a single wildfire or West Nile virus outbreak. The threatened listing may be an attempt to appease stakeholders on both sides of the decision, but Braun says it won’t save Gunnison sage grouse. “We know what’s going to happen, we just don’t know the timing,” he says. “In 20 years, maybe, they will all be gone.”